Geoffrey Wellum, author of First Light (2002), in which he looked back on his life as a Spitfire pilot in the second world war.
Photograph: Andy Paradise/The Independent/Rex/Shutterstock

Geoffrey Wellum, who has died aged 96, was the author of one of the most gripping personal accounts of aerial warfare ever written. First Light (2002), which was made into a BBC drama in 2010, was drawn from notes he had made as a teenage flier in the Battle of Britain.

Aged 18, in spring 1940, Wellum was posted to 92 Squadron – and it was then that he encountered, and flew, a Spitfire for the first time. Wellum had done his Royal Air Force training on de Havilland Tiger Moth biplanes and North American Harvard monoplanes. He fell in love with the Vickers Supermarine Spitfire almost instantly. “I experience an exhilaration that I cannot recall ever having felt before,” he wrote in First Light. “It’s like one of those wonderful dreams, a Peter Pan sort of dream.

“The whole thing feels unreal and I can’t believe this is really happening. I must be getting lightheaded! What a pity, in a way, that an aeroplane that can impart such a glorious feeling of sheer joy and beauty has got to be used to fight somebody.”

Soon after his arrival, 92 Squadron moved from Duxford in Cambridgeshire to Pembrey in Carmarthenshire. There, Wellum made his first sorties, pursuing a Junkers Ju 88 German bomber as far as Weymouth, Dorset, and losing it in the clouds; attempting night-fighting around Bristol; and “chasing isolated German aircraft all over the south-west”. But all of this was a prelude to the squadron’s move, on 9 September 1940, to Biggin Hill in Kent, at the centre of that summer’s battle.

In his combat narration Wellum conveys something of the texture of battle, the imminence of death, aircraft straining for kills yards apart, the exhilaration, the surrealism, the terror, the speed – and the Messerschmitt Bf 109s. “God, is there no end to them? The sun glints on their wings and bellies as they roll like trout in a stream streaking over smooth round pebbles. Trout streams, water meadows, waders, fast-flowing water, the pretty barmaid at the inn. Dear Jesus why this?”

By late September the Battle of Britain was over, and the blitz, the night-time onslaught on the country’s urban centres, was under way. For Wellum and his comrades the intensity eased, as Spitfires were unsatisfactory nightfighters, and the squadron moved into winter quarters at Manston in Kent. During the battle he had shot down a Heinkel He 111 bomber, and claimed a quarter share in a Ju 88. That November there were two damaged Bf 109s, and one shared. Another Bf 109 was claimed in 1941, and there may have been more, as he was not one greatly concerned with recording such things.

By summer 1941, the Germans had invaded the Soviet Union and there would be no more intensive bombing of southern England until the arrival of the V1 flying bombs, or “doodle bugs”, and V2 missiles in 1944. For Wellum the focus had switched to daytime sweeps, mainly over northern France. The intention was to engage with the Luftwaffe in combat, and to escort RAF bombing missions.

A 1941 photograph taken at Biggin Hill, Kent, of Geoffrey Wellum, right, and Brian Kingcome, another fighter pilot, in front of a Spitfire. Photograph: Alamy

That summer Wellum was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. By September his time with 92 Squadron had come to an end, and he was tired. He was posted to an operational training unit and did not return to squadron service until February 1942, when he became a flight commander with 65 Squadron, at Great Sampford in Essex.

There were new problems. The Germans were flying a formidable new fighter, the Focke-Wulf Fw 190, and Wellum was beginning to suffer from persistent headaches. At the end of July, he was detailed to command a flight of eight Spitfires from the aircraft carrier HMS Furious, sailing from the Clyde to the Mediterranean, and land them on the besieged island of Malta. His headaches became severe and he was diagnosed with sinusitis. He remained on the island as part of the air defence force before returning to Britain, suffering from exhaustion. He was subsequently involved in the testing of Hawker Typhoon fighter-cum-ground-attack aircraft, but did not return to combat duties.

Born in Walthamstow, on the eastern edge of London, Geoffrey was the only child of Percy, who managed an off-licence, and his wife, Edith. Percy had served at Gallipoli during the first world war and was commissioned on the battlefield. Geoffrey attended Forest school in Snaresbrook, and, while waiting that last term to join the RAF, captained the school cricket team.

In 1943 he married Grace Neil and they had three children. After Wellum left the RAF the family settled in Epping, Essex. He worked for a family haulage business and, after that went under, spent time working as a commodity broker in the City. The couple divorced in 1975, and six years later he relocated to Mullion on the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall. He joined the local choir, and eventually became deputy harbourmaster.

A daughter, Deborah, died last year. He is survived by two children, Anna and Neil.

• Geoffrey Harry Augustus Wellum, pilot and writer, born 4 August 1921; died 18 July 2018